Mainstreaming Torture

Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

Rebecca Gordon

Sending to Society of Christian Ethics June is Torture Awareness month—blog! noted goodreads in aq

Explains and offers new insight into the concept of institutionalized state torture

Explores how Americans have been conditioned to react to threats of terrorism, real and imagined

Mainstreaming Torture

Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

Rebecca Gordon

Description

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reopened what many people in America had long assumed was a settled ethical question: Is torture ever morally permissible? Within days, some began to suggest that, in these new circumstances, the new answer was yes. Rebecca Gordon argues that September 11 did not, as some have said, change everything, and that institutionalized state torture remains as wrong today as it was on the day before those terrible attacks. Furthermore, U.S. practices during the war on terror are rooted in a history that began long before September 11, a history that includes both support for torture regimes abroad and the use of torture in American jails and prisons.The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reopened what Gordon argues that the most common ethical approaches to tortureutilitarianism and deontology (ethics based on adherence to duty)do not provide sufficient theoretical purchase on the problem. Both approaches treat torture as a series of isolated actions that arise in moments of extremity, rather than as an ongoing, historically and socially embedded practice. She advocates instead a virtue ethics approach, based in part on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Such an approach better illumines tortures ethical dimensions, taking into account the implications of torture for human virtue and flourishing. An examination of torture's effect on the four cardinal virtuescourage, temperance, justice, and prudence (or practical reason)suggests specific ways in which each of these are deformed in a society that countenances torture.many people in America had long assumed was a settled Mainstreaming Torture concludes with the observation that if the United States is to come to terms with its involvement in institutionalized state torture, there must be a full and official accounting of what has been done, and those responsible at the highest levels must be held accountable.

Mainstreaming Torture

Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

Rebecca Gordon

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Describing the Problem 2. Torture in the Conduct of the ''War on Terror'' 3. The Current Discussion 4. A Different Approach: Virtue Ethics 5. Considering Torture as a (False) Practice 6. Goods and Virtues 7. Conclusion: What Is to Be Done? Notes Index

Mainstreaming Torture

Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

Rebecca Gordon

Author Information

Rebecca Gordon, Lecturer, Philosophy Department and Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, University of San Francisco

Rebecca Gordon received her B.A. from Reed college and her M.Div. and Ph.D in Ethics and Social Theory from Graduate Theological Union. She teaches in the Department of Philosophy and for the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua (1986) and Cruel and Usual: How Welfare Reform Punishes Poor People (2001).

Mainstreaming Torture

Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

Rebecca Gordon

Reviews and Awards

"The book will be useful for contexts in which readers are interested in seeing how relevant Christian teaching and abstract political theory can be ti institutional life and practical politics today." - George R. Wilkes, Expository Times

"This remarkable morally and politically challenging and courageous work confronts unblinkingly the profoundly disturbing truth that both popular and scholarly discourses in America consistently distort and sanitize the essential nature of the torture that has become a socially embedded practice in our country. If you care about our national character, consider these insightful and telling analyses and demand an appropriate accounting from our political leaders." - Henry Shue, University of Oxford

"We would rather avoid facing the reality of torture. In this book, Gordon shows us that our primary ways of thinking about torture are in fact ways of avoiding the full reality of it. Arguments for and against torture treat it as isolated acts by individuals, but Gordon shows that torture is embedded in a system of social practices with a set of moral habits which are in many ways fostered by society as a whole. This is a well-researched, well-argued, and disturbing book." - William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University

"Torture by our U.S. military and spies is not new. Nor is it the result of a few bad apples. Gordon documents the systematic teaching and use of torture by the U.S. since Vietnam. This excellent book challenges us to end torture. Not only by prosecuting the front line people who get caught, but also going after the high-ranking public officials who are tortures intellectual authors." - Bill Quigley, University of New Orleans

Mainstreaming Torture

Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

Rebecca Gordon

From Our Blog

At long last ' despite the attempts at sabotage by, and over the protests of the CIA, and notwithstanding the dilatory efforts of the State Department ' the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has finally issued the executive summary of its 6,300-page report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. We should celebrate its publication as a genuine victory for opponents of torture.

By Rebecca Gordon June is Torture Awareness Month, so this seems like a good time to consider some difficult aspects of torture people in the United States might need to be aware of. Sadly, this country has a long history of involvement with torture, both in its military adventures abroad and within its borders.

By Rebecca Gordon The US military involvement in Iraq has more or less ended, and the war in Afghanistan is limping to a conclusion. Don't the problems of torture really belong to the bad old days of an earlier administration? Why bring it up again? Why keep harping on something that is over and done with? Because it's not over, and it's not done with.